Kinship with Animals

BY Kate Solisti & Michael Tobias

Introduction to the First Edition

Despite the world’s love affair with such great animal stories as those of Beatrix Potter and Hugh Lofting, science still chooses to dismiss most deep personal intuitions and feelings about animals as merely “anthropomorphic.” In Kinship with the Animals we have expressly sought out extraordinary stories, anecdotes, and the rich, subversive science of encounters between humans and other life forms that might truly expand and accelerate the vocabulary of interspecies dialogue and empathy.

These exquisite tales of revelation, discussion, research, and miraculous accident are all real; they happened. The exchanges occurred in the earth’s wildest places and in the most familiar homes. In every case, their presentation here suggests a new and critical wave of emergent understanding that has gained considerable stature among an ever-increasing range of caring individuals in all countries. Those individuals’ views regarding animal awareness, cognition, and communication form the backbone of a new human consciousness which is surfacing at the very moment that more species are being driven to extinction than at any other time in biological history, a time when so many millions of animals are being killed every year for human consumption.

It is the intent of the book to make potently clear that the joys, significance, and possibilities for interspecies relationships through communication, empathy, and mutual understanding should constitute one of the most important and shaping imperatives for all human behavior, now and forever more. It is our hope that these consistently personal and subjective stories and insights will help shed new light on the behavior, thinking, and feelings of other creatures and, perhaps, of the biosphere herself.

Contributors to Kinship with the Animals come from numerous countries and traditions. Together, we raise a united voice to push the limits of the possible within scientific circles and currently accepted “norms” by offering and exploring alternative explanations for personal experiences and revelationsamid the cornucopia of other animal and plant species surrounding us. We wantonly suggest companionship and affiliation with such creatures, both in the wild and at home, that challenge traditional views regarding animal intelligence and emotional refinement. Finally, each of us recounts and reveals moments in our lives where the inexplicable occurred, leading our minds toward new awareness, our hearts toward deeper wellsprings, our communities—if they will listen—toward a path of ecological sanity, our species—if only it will agree to wake up—toward an embrace of its own humanity.

If the massive amount of pain inflicted upon other life forms is to cease and if the tide of habitat loss and lineage extinction in the coming hours, days, and years is to be reversed, human ethics, behavior, and science must accept its humble place in the world. We have no other choice. Our muscleman mentality is an anachronism; our outbreaks of violence absolute throwbacks to a churning cauldron of evolution we should long ago have transcended. Evolution does not dictate the possibilities for virtue and compassion. Only our individual choices can do that. Our kinship with all other life forms, as suggested in this modest volume, offers up a path directly before us, and to all sides: the path of biophilia, the love of nature, and the hope—well documented—for having most meaningful encounters with other species. We need not seek one-celled organisms beneath the seas of Jupiter’s moon, Europa, to remind us that we are not alone in the heavens. The Earth herself may comprise as many as fifty million currently co-habiting species, of which fewer than 1.6 million have ever been identified by Homo sapiens. The possibilities for forming new friendships are staggering. But with between seventy and eight hundred species going extinct, or being driven to the brink of extinction, every day—a rate and figure that is fast increasing—there is not much time left to unleash this renaissance of empathy and gentle inquiry.

Nonetheless, there is still time, and we ask our friends and readers of this volume to meditate deeply on ways that they might help engender paths of nonviolence and compassion, paths of love toward our kindred plant and animal friends, all of whom came before us, all of whom depend upon the vulnerable benevolence of this miraculous planet, which is presently dominated—overrun by any other name—by one species.

When the Night Bird Sings

Excerpted from When the Night Bird Sings
Joyce Sequichie Hifler

Sweet sparkling notes are gifts of the night bird. A musician of high, clear places, the night bird copies everything it hears. It sits atop the highest tree and replays what it has heard to all who will listen. It mimics even the baby chicks as they follow the mother hen among the grasses, across shallow streams, and under porches.

Meadows are sweet with the soft sounds of doves and coo-coos, and the bobwhite calls “Where are you?” to its covey. Meadowlarks, wearing yellow bibs and black necklaces, pour out their uninhibited songs in the sunshine. Deep in the dark forest, an owl chuckles in its daytime sleep, and crows try to stir up trouble with constant cawing.

The song of the night bird, or mockingbird, cuts through all the other sounds and finds the ear of the poet. Ordinarily the mockingbird is a daytime singer, but it is not uncommon for the mockingbird to record too many songs.Once in awhile, when all is quiet in the velvet darkness, a sudden burst of music fills the night. Rare and brief, the night song strikes a high vibration, and, in the twinkling of an eye, something or someone is changed dramatically. A change not earned—coming by grace alone. Grace, the unearned favor which makes us ask what we did to deserve a certain thing.

Nothing, nothing at all. It was the love-gift of the Great One.

Listen quietly . . . and hear.

A Sudden Burst of Song

Sometimes even nature has difficulty sleeping on those nights when there is a sudden burst of music from the mockingbird as though it could no longer contain its song.

The song of the night bird is a serenade to life, a tension reliever for deeper inner relaxation. It brings with it an awareness that life is good.

When there is such awareness, there is much less need to constantly worry about the trials that come with daylight. We learn to take our ease when we can. Then we are grateful for a time of sleep, a chance to rest.

It may be that nature’s music was important to us when I was growing up because we had no musical instruments at home or in the church. We sang together. There was an awareness of voices and the parts that made the singing music or strident noise. Nature’s songs are never hard on the ears. Singing with Mama was pleasant because her voice was soft and gave harmony to most any song. Driving at night with Papa was a favorite time because we always harmonized singing “Precious Memories.”

During an anthrax outbreak, Uncle Carl had the unpleasant job of burning the carcasses of whiteface cattle to stop the disease from spreading. We rode horseback many miles back in hilly ranch pastures hunting for cows separated from the herd. Uncle Carl would be riding ahead and I would be trailing along on Figger, but I could hear his Indian voice singing “The Cattle Call,” and I loved it though I hated the disease we were fighting.

Now, when I am standing in the moonlight and I hear the midnight minstrel serving up his overflow of daytime songs, I am brought again to the memory of these precious voices singing—and once again time takes me back and I recognize special qualities of each one. They are telling me they still sing with me.

And when I hear Cherokees sing “Amazing Grace” in their beautiful language, my heart is with the ancients once more.